Uluru

It is rare that a single picture instantly identifies a nation and maybe a people.  Uluru/Ayers Rock is iconic in that way.  You see the picture, like the one I took above, and you say to yourself "Australia".  However, no matter how many times you see a picture of it, nothing prepares you for the actual thing.

Before coming to Uluru, both K and I privately thought that the sight would not live up to the hype (and cost).  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We were both stunned by it - and I think every man that has ever set foot on this planet and has seen Uluru must get the same feeling.  During our last night at Uluru, our tour guide (Graham) was clicking away pictures.  This is a guy (an Australian) that is older than me and has lived by the rock for years, given countless tours of the place and knows more about Uluru than most people on the planet.  Yet here he is snapping photos like the rest of us tourists.  I was watching him with a bit of a smile.  He turned to me and said - "you never tire of this place.  There is always time for one more photo."  Perhaps that says something about this place that everyone has heard of and seen in pictures.  It is breathtaking, no matter what you think you know about it or how often you see it.

Before I share some of my pictures with you, a few facts (K says a lot of people don't want to read this stuff, so if that is true, skip down.  My feeling is you can use Google to find a photo of some of the places we have been - so I want to try to give people back home some background and personal feeling of the places we visit.)

Current theory is that Uluru (pronounced "ew lu roo" and also known as by its English name of Ayers Rock) and its less known but actually bigger next door neighbor rock formation - called Kata Tjuta - were formed millions of years ago from the slow erosion of something known as the Petermann Ranges in Australia.  Supposedly, the Petermann Range mountains rivaled, if not exceeded, the Himalayas for height many thousands of years ago.  Uluru and Kata Tjuta (pronounced "kata jew ta") actually started as depressions in the ground to the east of the ranges.  Each depression filled with sediment - Kata Tjuta (pictured below) being closer to the mountain ranges filled with heavier rock and stone material while Uluru filled with finer sand as it was a bit further to the east (the plains between the ranges and these depressions helping to filter the material of erosion.

Over time, water (huge lakes) filled the plains and the depressions got compacted and formed rock.  A conglomerate rock formed in the case of Kata Tjuta and a hard sandstone in the case of Uluru.  A second mountain forming upheaval formed a second set of ranges in Australia and this forced both of the depressions and surrounding area up.  When this happened, Uluru actually got turned 85 degrees (thus the reason Uluru looks like vertical striations to this date).  More time and erosion moved away the plain around both formations, and we are left today with these huge rock formations that sit out in the middle of a desert.

How big are these rocks?  Uluru is over 2800 feet high.  Kata Tjuta's (also known by its English name of The Olgas) largest mound stands almost 3500 feet high.  Uluru is pretty much one single triangle shaped rock that is 5.8 miles in circumference.  Many people call it a monolith but that is not really a geologist's term.  Kata Tjuta is a series of domes or mounds that have valleys between them.  The collective area of all the mounds is 8.3 square miles.

The local Aboriginal people (Anangu - pronounced "an a new") jointly control the formations (and the national park that surrounds both rock formations) with Australia's government (national park service).  Both rock formations have significant cultural and sacred meaning to the Anangu.  As such, they ask tourists not to climb it or photograph certain parts of the formations.  They also have stories about the creation and markings/crevasses on the formations.  Our guides provided some wonderful instruction about the Anangu and their attachment to the land.  Of particular interest to me was the ingenuity of the people to survive in such a harsh environment and use what the formations helped give them.  For example, Uluru is hard rock that does collect and protect (via shaded pools) the small amount of water that falls in this area. 

So the Anangu would use the exits from the pools as hunting grounds for kangaroo and other local species.  But they would not drink water from the same source as the animals so as not to leave any human scent or marking around the water - if you do that, the animals become wary and avoid the site.  And they would always kill the last animal leaving the water hole - the idea was that if the animals saw one of their herd killed, they again would be leery of the site.  Knock off the last one, and the animals are just wondering what happened to the guy in the rear when they get back to their fields at night.

K and I had several tours of Uluru and I did a complete 360 degree "Base Walk" of Uluru on my own.  The rock changes its colors and views as the sun rises and sets.  So any picture of the surface would be totally different in a few hours depending on the light and weather.  K and I then did a tour of Kata Tjuta the day we left.  So I'll cover our visits of Uluru in this post and share with you some items from Kata Tjuta and our hotel (Longitude 131) in my next post.  The hotel itself is worthy of a post and I know K is going to want to comment too.

Here are some of my best-of-the-best pictures of Uluru over the course of 2+ days we were there (again, I have thousands - literally - so I hope these do it justice - and K says I am posting too many pictures anyway).  Like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite, there is a picture around every corner at Uluru.

 If you open the photo above and zoom in a little, you'll see people are on the hillside to the right.  That should start to give you some idea of the size of Uluru.

 

What you don't realize from photographs of the whole formation you see in travel brochures and the internet is just how many caves, caverns, valleys, and notches exist in the surface.  When you get up close, its true size and real characteristics take shape.  Also, it is made of a very hard sandstone (not soft sandstone like some of the southwest US mountains) that has a high iron content.  So it has a lovely red color to it that turns more brown and purple in lower light of sunset/sunrise (hopefully captured by some of the pictures above).

Here is a shot of me up against Uluru to give you a sense of the texture of this massive rock.

I like the picture below because it gives you the texture of the surface while also showing you how Uluru just emerges from the desert floor.  It is all a rock - like the kind you would stumble on in the garden - but just one extremely large rock and you would have to be extremely large yourself to stumble on it.

As I mentioned, Uluru is very significant to the Anangu people - and it has been for years.  There are many Aboriginal sights in and around Uluru - to include rock/cave art.  Here is a small sample:

 

The art in the caves often served as a means to pass on information to many of the Anangu children.  So, for the teachers among my family and friends, you are looking at the blackboards in the classroom of ten thousand years ago in Australia!

You may have noticed in the pictures that feature K and I, we are wearing nets over our heads.  The one bad part of Uluru and almost all of the dry Northern Territory is that there are flies everywhere - tons of them.  They look like the common American house fly but a bit smaller.  They do not bite or carry disease, they are just annoying.  They also disappear at sunset, so they don't disrupt meals held outside in the evening.  There are so many that they often just cover your clothes and would love to fly all over your face - in your mouth, in your nose and eyes - if you don't have a net.  So, most resorts give out these nets (or you can buy them in the local store) to help fend them off a bit.  They work well and make hiking around the region pleasant without having to think about the critters - although they don't exactly make a nice fashion statement.  Although I thought K was able to pull it off better than most of us.

If anyone is planning a trip and decides not to come to Uluru - you are making a mistake.  Yes - it is very remote and getting here is not easy, but it will be worth your efforts.  It is one of those places in the world that no photography or words can capture well - you simply have to see it for yourself.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the resort we stayed in (and the meal we had at Uluru under the stars) and our visit to Kata Tjuta.